While progress is being made for equality in Cuba, New Mexico and even Utah, things in Uganda and other parts of Africa are grim. Uganda has just passed an anti-gay law that will leave gays facing the possibility of life imprisonment. It bears repeating that American Christofascists played a large role in whipping up anti-gay hysteria. Having largely lost their anti-gay jihad in America, these foul individuals and organizations set their sights on backward, ignorant areas of Africa as fertile ground for the toxic agenda of hate and bigotry. Among the lies disseminated by the "godly folk" is the lie that gays prey on children. Never mind that most pedophiles are heterosexual males. Hate, hypocrisy, and bigotry are what conservative Christianity is all about nowadays. It is a cancer that needs to be eradicated. Towleroad has details on the vicious law passed in Uganda:

Despite previous failed attempts to pass the so-called "Kill the Gays" bill,
the Ugandan parliament has today successfully passed an amended version
of the legislation that criminalizes "aggravated homosexuality" though
removes the death penalty as a punishment, opting instead to imprison
offenders for life should they suffer the maximum penalty. The AP has the report:

Homosexuality was already illegal in
Uganda under a colonial-era law that criminalised sexual acts "against
the order of nature", but the Ugandan politician who wrote the new law
argued that tough new legislation was needed because gay people from the
west threatened to destroy Ugandan families and were allegedly
"recruiting" Ugandan children into gay lifestyles.

The Ugandan gay community has disputed
this account, saying that Ugandan political and religious leaders had
come under the influence of American evangelicals who wanted to spread
their anti-gay campaign in Africa. They have singled out Scott Lively, a Massachusetts evangelical,who they sued in March 2012 under
the Alien Tort Statute that allows non-citizens to file suit in the US
if there is an alleged violation of international law...

Despite criticism of the bill abroad, it
was highly popular among a lot of Ugandans who said the country had the
right to pass laws that protect its children.

One can only hope that western nations will severe all aid to Uganda and leave it to suffer the consequences of its embrace of ignorance and bigotry. Uganda is a political and social hell hole - I have a friend who is working there - which deserves every misfortune that befalls it.

Having followed a number of "Christian" organizations - many of which are designated hate groups - for many years, one constant under current one finds in these organizations is racism and white supremacist yearnings. This holds for American Family Association, Focus on the Family, Family Research Council and, here in Virginia, The Family Foundation. Racism is a twin pillar with these organizations hatred towards gays. It's all part of a mindset that America belongs to white conservative Christians and that everyone else is unwelcome. While the "Duck Dynasty" brouhaha has focused on the homophobic statements of Phil Robertson, blatant racism and an effort to promote the myth of the "happy and fell treated Negro" was prominent as well. These fundamentalist simply put are NOT nice people. A column in the New York Times looks at the racist element of the controversy. Here are excerpts:

I must admit that I’m not a watcher of “Duck Dynasty,” but I’m very much
aware of it. I, too, am from Louisiana, and the family on the show
lives outside the town of Monroe, which is a little over 50 miles from
my hometown. We’re all from the sticks.

So, when I became aware of the homophobic and racially insensitive
comments that the patriarch on the show, Phil Robertson, made this week
in an interview in GQ magazine, I thought: I know that mind-set.

Robertson’s interview reads as a commentary almost without malice,
imbued with a matter-of-fact, this-is-just-the-way-I-see-it kind of
Southern folksiness. To me, that is part of the problem. You don’t have
to operate with a malicious spirit to do tremendous harm. Insensitivity
and ignorance are sufficient. In fact, intolerance that is disarming is
the most dangerous kind. It can masquerade as morality.

I don’t want to focus on the employment
repercussions of what Robertson said, but on the content of it.

In
particular, I want to focus on a passage on race from the interview, in
which Robertson says:

“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not
once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers.
I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white
trash. We’re going across the field. ...They’re singing and happy. I
never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These
doggone white people’ — not a word! ...Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you
say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was
singing the blues.”

While this is possible, it is highly improbable. Robertson is 67 years
old, born into the Jim Crow South. Only a man blind and naïve to the
suffering of others could have existed there and not recognized that
there was a rampant culture of violence against blacks, with incidents
and signs large and small, at every turn, on full display.

Louisiana helped to establish the architecture for Jim Crow. First,
there were the Black Codes that sought to control interactions between
blacks and whites and constrain black freedom. The Jim Crow Encyclopedia
even points out that in one Louisiana town, Opelousas, “freedmen needed
the permission of their employers to enter town.”

Then, in 1890, the State Legislature passed the Separate Car Act, which
stipulated that all railway companies in the state “shall provide equal
but separate accommodations for the white, and colored races” in their
coaches. Robertson’s comments conjure the insidious mythology of historical
Southern fiction, that of contented slave and benevolent master, of the
oppressed and the oppressors gleefully abiding the oppression, happily
accepting their wildly variant social stations. This mythology posits
that there were two waves of ruination for Southern culture, the Civil
War and the civil rights movement, that made blacks get upset and things
go downhill.

Furthermore, Robertson doesn’t seem to acknowledge the possibility that
black workers he encountered possessed the most minimal social
sophistication and survival skills necessary to not confess
dissatisfaction to a white person on a cotton farm (no matter how
“trashy” that white person might think himself).

It’s impossible to know if Robertson recognizes the historical resonance
and logical improbability of his comments. But that’s not an excuse.

In a surprising but welcomed move, a federal judge has struck down Utah's gay marriage ban ruling that the U.S. Constitution requires the same equal protection and due process
rights for same-sex individuals to marry the person of their choice that are given to heterosexual individuals. Expect howling and spittle erupts from the Christofascists and their Mormon cousins. Simply put, religion has no place in the civil laws governing marriage and while knuckle dragging, bigoted individuals and ignorance embracing denominations are free to do whatever they want within their houses of worship, they should have zero influence on the civil marriage laws. In his ruling, Judge Shelby rightly found that the motivation of the ban on gay marriage was aimed at demeaning gays and that the ban had no reasonable basis. The full opinion can be found here. Sadly, Utah's governor and attorney general support the dangerous belief that the majority should be able to deny rights to minorities. In contrast, Salt Lake City Mayor Becker began performing marriages immediately. Here are highlights from the Salt Lake Tribune:

A federal judge in Utah on Friday struck
down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, saying the U.S. Constitution
offers the same equal protection and due process rights to same-sex
individuals to marry the person of their choice that it gives
heterosexual individuals.

"The state’s current laws deny its gay and
lesbian citizens their fundamental right to marry and, in so doing,
demean the dignity of these same-sex couples for no rational reason,"
wrote U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby in the 53-page decision.
"Accordingly, the court finds that these laws are unconstitutional."

In the ruling, Shelby enjoined the state from
enforcing two different statutes that ban same-sex marriage as well as
Amendment 3 to the state’s constitution, approved by Utah voters in
2004.

As news of the ruling broke, hundreds of people
descended on county clerk offices around the state to request marriage
licenses. At the Salt Lake County Clerk’s Office, a First Baptist pastor
was on hand to conduct wedding ceremonies.

Hours later, the Utah attorney general’s office
appealed the decision to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver
and also filed a motion asking Shelby to stay the ruling while it seeks
to defend Utah’s Amendment 3. "The federal district court’s ruling that
same-sex marriage is a fundamental right has never been established in
any previous case in the 10th Circuit," it said.

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert released a statement that said he was "very
disappointed an activist federal judge is attempting to override the
will of the people of Utah" and said he would work with Acting Attorney
General Brian L. Tarbet "to determine the best course to defend
traditional marriage within the borders of Utah."

The ruling is the first federal decision on a
state law banning same-sex marriages or denying recognition of legal
same-sex marriages since the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision this
summer that struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

The Utah judge ruled just 16 days after he heard arguments
in the case and well before his self-imposed deadline to render a
decision by Jan. 7, when the next hearing in the matter was to be held,
relying on extensive briefs filed in the case by both sides.

You know that America's claim to be the land of liberty and religious freedom is a lie when Cuba now provides more employment non-discrimination protections for its LGBT citizens than 29 states in this country, Virginia naturally being one of the 29. This strange state of affairs underscores the need to eliminate the special deference and special privileges afforded conservative Christianity - which is neither truly Christian nor a positive force - in America. One can only hope that anti-gay Republicans in Congress will be embarrassed that Cuba is now more protective of its LGBT citizens than this country. Andrés Duque has details on the historic legislation in Cuba. Here are details:

In what Cuban LGBT advocates are calling a historic victory the Cuban
parliament has reportedly adopted changes to the island's labor codes to
include language that explicitly bans employment discrimination based
on sexual orientation.

We now have the 1st law that protects gays, in this case at the
workplace. The intense parliamentary debate left it almost for certain
that the labor law will also ban discrimination based on gender
identity. [President Raul Castro's daughter] Mariela Castro
proposed banning discrimination based on gender identity and obtained
the support of Christian and intellectual parliamentary leaders."

He also said that while other protections had yet to be approved Mariela
Castro, daughter of Cuban president Raul Castro and newly elected
member of the parliament, stood up and called for additional language
banning employment discrimination on the basis of gender identity, HIV
status and disability. Francisco says that while some deputies spoke
against the measures they received immediate support from Miriam Ofelia Ortega Suárez who is also the first woman to be ordained as pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Cuba as well as deputy Pablo Odén Marichal who is an Episcopalian pastor as well.

Cuban vice president Miguel Díaz-Canel, who also has a seat in
the parliament, said he recognized the political value of Mariela
Castro's proposals and suggested the creation of a parliamentary
commission to study and implement the suggestions. President Raul
Castro who led the Friday parliamentary sessions backed the proposal and
a majority voted in favor of sending the additional proposals to a
committee.

It is long past time that Congress enact ENDA. It is also long past time that America normalize relations with Cuba and open up trade and tourism with and to that country a mere 90 miles from Key West.

Some of the darkest deeds done in recent American history were done under the Bush/Cheney regime which authorized torture, committed war crimes and willfully violated the Geneva Conventions. Many Americans would like to sweep those crimes under the rug and pretend that they never happened at the direction of a sitting president and vice president of the United States. But they did, and the best way to make sure that such crimes never happen again is to release the reports on the torture and crimes done in the name of the American people. We need to learn from this dark chapter of American history so that it may never happen again. It is important that Barack Obama stop stonewalling in an apparent effort to avoid embarrassment to America and those who cooperated in lawless torture. The New York Times concurs and is call for the release of the full reports. Here are editorial excerpts:

A dozen years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it is
appalling that official reports about the extent and nature of the
rendition, detention and torture that came in their aftermath are still
being kept from the American public and even members of Congress charged
with overseeing intelligence activities.

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s exhaustive 6,000-page report
was completed last December. But it has yet to be declassified. Likely
the closest to a full accounting the nation is going to get, the report
is said to contain unsparing criticism of the program. News reports have
said it chronicles the Central Intelligence Agency’s repeated
misleading of the White House, Congress and the public about the value
of brutal and lawless methods that yielded little valuable intelligence
despite the claims of former Vice President Dick Cheney and other
defenders of torture.

The lack of transparency was underlined on Tuesday during a hearing on
the nomination of Caroline Krass to be the C.I.A.’s top lawyer. Senator
Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat, disclosed the existence of an internal
study done by the C.I.A. under Mr. Brennan’s predecessor, Leon Panetta,
that contradicted the agency’s response to the Senate study. Mr. Udall
said he believed it was “consistent with the Intelligence’s Committee’s
report.” Mr. Udall said: “This raises fundamental questions about why a
review the C.I.A. conducted internally years ago — and never provided to
the committee — is so different from the C.I.A.’s formal response to
the committee study.”

The committee must insist on the Obama administration’s cooperation in
making public all three documents — the Senate Intelligence Committee
report, the official C.I.A. response to it, and the internal C.I.A.
study.

Rendition, illegal detention and torture did not arise on President
Obama’s watch. He has repeatedly denounced the use of torture and ended
the detention program as one of his first White House acts. But his
expansive claims of secrecy have succeeded in blocking victims’ lawsuits
and helping to keep details of rendition and torture secret, denying
the country a reckoning necessary for the historical record,
establishing accountability and avoiding similar human rights violations
in the future.

Mr. Obama has a duty to ensure prompt public release of the documents —
minimally redacted to protect genuine national security secrets, not to
avoid embarrassment.

In the grand scheme of things "Duck Dynasty" and the grossly bigoted and racist Phil Robertson do not add up to much. However, the scramble of the potential 2016 Republican candidate field to support Robertson's hate filled and bigoted comments underscores just how sick today's Republican Party has become. These individuals - Bobby Jindal, Ted Cruz, etc. - might just as well have a tattoo saying "I'm a whore" emblazoned across their foreheads. And its all about winning over the fetid swamp that is now the GOP base where racism, religious extremism, rampant homophobia and attacks on anyone deemed "other" are the guiding principles. My Republican fore-bearers, all of whom valued knowledge and intellect, must be rolling over in their graves. Note how the usual hate group leaders are also rushing to Robertson's defense. The Washington Post looks at this race to go as low as conceivably possible. Here are story highlights:

Few could have predicted that the story lines of the hit A&E
reality show “Duck Dynasty” and the 2016 presidential contest would
converge.

But that unexpected mash-up played out Thursday as conservative
politicians rushed to defend Phil Robertson, the shaggy-bearded,
homespun star of the breakout series, who was suspended by the cable network after his published comments about gays stirred a storm of controversy.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), a likely White House contender whose
state is home to the show about a family that runs a duck-hunting gear
enterprise, called Robertson and his family “great citizens.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), another probable 2016 candidate, chimed in on
Facebook, writing: “If you believe in free speech or religious liberty,
you should be deeply dismayed over the treatment of Phil Robertson.”

Their embrace of Robertson — who in an interview with GQ
described “homosexual behavior” as sinful and compared it to bestiality
and infidelity — underscored how gay rights remain a potent political
issue for many religious voters on the right.

Conservative Christians “feel like they’re under siege in a culture
that is increasingly intolerant and discriminatory toward their views,
and they don’t feel represented,” said Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith
& Freedom Coalition, who noted that Robertson paraphrased from the
Bible’s Book of Corinthians in his interview. “I did not get any
impression at all that there was animus expressed,” Reed said. By
jumping into the “Duck Dynasty” maelstrom, conservative leaders such as
Jindal and Cruz sent a clear message to evangelical voters: We’re on
your side.

Fred Sainz, spokesman for the gay advocacy group Human Rights
Campaign, said that “the days of making gay a wedge issue are dated.” “I
think they are outliers,” he said of Jindal, Cruz and Palin, adding
that he believes they jumped into the “Duck Dynasty” controversy to
appeal to “a niche base.” But that base remains a powerful force
in the Republican Party, particularly when it comes to presidential
primaries in states such as Iowa and South Carolina.

[T]he Faith & Freedom Coalition called on its members to launch an
e-mail and phone campaign to let A&E know they will boycott the
network until Robertson is reinstated.

Fundamental evangelical Christianity is a cancer on American society. Any good works that might be done are far outweighed by the hate, bigotry and division that are its principle fruits. That the GOP continues to prostitute itself to this putrid element of society underscores that the GOP is engaged in a slow form of political suicide.

Hate and bigotry do have a price as the Boy Scouts of America continues to learn as Lockheed Martin joins the list of major corporations that will no longer make financial gifts to the Scouts because the Scouts' homophobic policies. We can expect more howling from the Christofascists who will claim their religious liberty is under attack even though it is not. They can still engage in their bigotry and corporations like Lockheed Martin can exercise their right to not underwrite hate filled policies. As noted in a previous post, a former seminarian summed up the source of the Scouts' "deeply held religious beliefs" that condemn gays: the Old Testament, a work properly describes as follows: "the Hebrew scriptures were [are] altogether fictitious, plagiarized versions
of other ancient mystery religions with a desperate agenda to galvanize
and perpetuate an ethnic minority." The Scouts agenda and that of Christofascist hasn't departed from the original Old Testament agenda of galvanizing and perpetuating a minority that has a desperate need to feel superior over others. The Virginian Pilot reports of Lockheed Martins rejection of this agenda:

Defense and aerospace giant Lockheed Martin is halting its donations
to the Boy Scouts of America over the organization's ban on gays serving
as adult leaders after a review of the company's philanthropy
guidelines, the company said Thursday.

Lockheed Martin spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the company decided it
will not support nonprofit organizations that do not align with its
corporate policies or commitment to diversity. The company did not
disclose how much it has contributed to the Boy Scouts.

Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed follows UPS Inc., Merck & Co. and
computer-chip maker Intel in withdrawing support for the Boy Scouts over
its no-gays policy in the past two years.

In a written statement, Johndroe said Lockheed seeks to support nonprofit groups that value diversity.

"We believe engaging with and funding an organization that openly
discriminates is in conflict with our policies," he said. "While we
applaud the mission of the Boy Scouts and the good things they do in our
communities, their policies that discriminate on the basis of sexual
orientation and religious affiliation conflict with Lockheed Martin
policies."

The sooner the American public puts divisive and antiquated - and fiction based - religious beliefs behind it, the better the future of this country will be.

I will concede that compared to his predecessor the Nazi Pope, Benedict XVI, Pope Francis is a breath of fresh air. But that is not to say that Pope Francis is the answer to the plight of gay Catholics, Catholics who have divorced and remarried, and/or Catholics who use contraception. A change in tone does not equal a change in Church dogma. Despite this reality and the fact that nothing has changed doctrinally (and that no one in the Church hierarchy who participated in the sex abuse cover up has been punished), The Advocate followed Time Magazine and named Pope Francis as it person of the year. A column in Religion Dispatches rightly takes The Advocate to task for this mistaken choice. Here are column highlights:

In case the editors of The Advocate did not notice, the Pope’s statement flying back from Brazil for World Youth Day was not a change in Catholic teaching, but in tone.

The Pope’s “If someone is gay and seeks the Lord with good will, who am I to judge” is not an encyclical,
but a statement. Granted, it was a statement that shocked the world
with its compassion, but the follow-up proved that it was not a change
in church teaching.

What Pope Francis is doing is walking a tightrope. Instead of pushing
dogma, he’s pushing a change in tone, not in substance. Because he is
carefully eliding the church’s teaching and focusing on compassion, many
liberals and media pundits—including The Advocate—believe that
he is opening a door to a changed theology. That is not the case. What
the Pope is doing is opening a door for discussion, but not necessarily
change.

If a mere change in language can move The Advocate to make Pope Francis their Person of the Year over Edie Windsor, whose case helped DOMA to crumble, I’m stunned.

The disappointment that will come in the future when Catholic church
teachings do not change will not be a surprise to those of us who know
the history of the glacial pace of change in the Catholic church.
Personally, unless Pope Francis calls a council on human sexuality, I
very much doubt his papacy will change much about the corpus of Catholic
teaching on homosexuality—defined by that tradition as ‘intrinsically disordered,”

While I very much appreciate the change in focus and tone from Pope
Francis, I would caution everyone: “don’t get it twisted.” Pope Francis
is still the Cardinal Bergoglio who opposed same sex marriage in Argentina.

As for a meritorious person of the year in the realm of religion, the column author says this:

If I had to pick my person of the year for the intersection of religion with LGBT justice, it would be a neighbor of mine, Rev. Frank Schaefer of
Lebanon, Pennsylvania, who has decided not to give up his United
Methodist credentials for performing a same sex marriage ceremony of his
son earlier this year.

By refusing to give up his credentials, he is forcing the United
Methodist church to perhaps take him to trial and strip him of his
credentialing—simply because of his belief that the Methodist Book of
Discipline is discriminatory.

Rev. Schaefer is not just talking, but he is walking the
walk—standing up for his son, same sex marriage, and his deeply held
beliefs. That is the mark of a person of the year. While I like Pope
Francis as much as anyone, I need concrete actions to back up the
sentiments. Until the dogma changes, talk is cheap.

In a unanimous ruling that will send Christofascists into spittle fleck convulsions, the New Mexico Supreme Court upheld to rights of same sex couples to civil law marriage. Indeed, the Court held that to bar gays from marriage would violate the equal protection guaranties of the New Mexico Constitution. The Court also rejected the Christofascist argument that marriage should be reserved to those who can procreate, noting that no such bars apply to the elderly, the infertile or those who choose to not have children. As noted in the previous post, love, commitment, companionship, and shared goals are the real substance of marriage, not legalized sex. Here are highlights from the Albuquerque Journal:

The New Mexico Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in favor of same-sex
couples, granting them all the same rights of marriage enjoyed by
heterosexual couples.

The court’s 31-page opinion states, in part, that: “All
rights, protections, and responsibilities that result from the marital
relationship shall apply equally to both same-gender and opposite-gender
married couples.”

New Mexico joins 16 other states, the District of Columbia, and several Native American tribes in recognizing same-sex unions.

Justice Edward Chavez, who authored the unanimous opinion,
rejected arguments made during an October hearing by opponents of
same-sex marriage.

“Procreation has never been a condition of marriage under
New Mexico law, as evidenced by the fact that the aged, the infertile,
and those who choose not to have children are not precluded from
marrying,” Chavez wrote in his opinion.

However, the ruling also stipulated that religious clergy
who do not agree with same-sex marriage are not required to perform
marriage ceremonies for gay and lesbian couples.

The court ruled that county clerks must issue marriage
licenses to couples regardless of gender, and that licenses issued to
same-sex couples prior to the ruling must be recognized. More than 1,400
same-sex couples have been issued marriage licenses in New Mexico since
August.

ACLU-New Mexico’s Legal Director Laura Schauer Ives said in a
release, “As a state, we have always strived to treat all families with
dignity and respect, and today’s decision allowing loving, committed
same sex couples to marry continues that tradition. The more than 1000
same-sex couples who have already married in New Mexico can now rest
certain knowing their marriages will be recognized and respected by our
state.”

Proving once again that there are no limits to how low today's Republican elected officials and Tea Party mouthpieces will go in order to prostitute themselves to the Christofascist element of the GOP base, one Republican after another has rushed to support redneck bigot, Phil Robertson of "Duck Dynasty" notoriety after he was suspended indefinitely by A&E for his verbal diarrhea in a recent GQ Magazine interview. These Republicans - and fame seekers like the mindless Sarah Palin - literally fell all over themselves rushing to defend Robertson. Politico looks at some of the pandering whore-like behavior. Here are excerpts:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal on Thursday criticized the “politically
correct crowd” following the suspension of “Duck Dynasty” star Phil
Robertson over comments he made about homosexuality and religion in a
recent interview with GQ magazine.

“Phil Robertson and his family
are great citizens of the State of Louisiana. The politically correct
crowd is tolerant of all viewpoints, except those they disagree with,”
Jindal said in a statement released by his office. “I don’t agree with
quite a bit of stuff I read in magazine interviews or see on TV. In
fact, come to think of it, I find a good bit of it offensive. But I also
acknowledge that this is a free country and everyone is entitled to
express their views.”

Not surprisingly, Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin and others stampeded to join the parade of willing political prostitutes. It is little wonder that the younger generations are turning their backs on the GOP in drovers.

Meanwhile, serious thinking people are feeling revulsion towards Robertson and the hate-filled and bigoted mindset he represents. Civil Commotion summed up well the reality that anti-gay animus is only part of the larger racist and bigoted world view that now permeates the GOP and the far right:

We believe that things said in
public get to be critiqued in public. While many “gospel” conservatives are
jumping up and down about A&E’s response to Phil Robertson’s views on
homosexuality, they seem to be quite silent on some other views expressed by Robertson
in GQ. In the January issue of GQ, the Duck
Dynasty star also comments on growing up in a pre-civil-rights-era Louisiana.

“I never, with my eyes, saw the
mistreatment of any black person,” Robertson claims. “Not once. Where we lived
was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them.
I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash.”

He adds, “They’re singing and happy.
I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These
doggone white people’—not a word!… Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were
they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”

While not totally condemning Robertson - given the freakish reality show format that his show represents - Andrew Sullivan takes umbrage that Robertson only equates homosexuality with a specific sex act:

This is a fascinating glimpse into the fundamentalist mind. You’ll
notice that, for the fundamentalist, all sin – when it comes down to it
- starts with sex. This sexual obsession, as the Pope has rightly
diagnosed it, is a mark of neurotic fundamentalism in Islam and Judaism
as well as Christianity. And if all sin is rooted in sex, then the
homosexual becomes the most depraved and evil individual in the cosmos.
So you get this classic statement about sin: “Start with homosexual
behavior and just morph out from there.”

This emphasis is absolutely not orthodox Christianity. . . . And to posit gay people as the true source of all moral corruption is to
use eliminationist rhetoric and demonizing logic to soften up a small
minority of people for exclusion, marginalization and, at some point,
violence. . . . . What we’re seeing here – and it’s very much worth debating – is how
fundamentalist religion seizes on recognizable, immoral minorities to
shore up its own sense of righteousness.

All we’re seeing here is the effect of cultural isolation. The only
thing I find objectionable about it – and it is objectionable – is the
reduction of gay people and our relationships to sex acts. Mr Robertson
would not be happy – indeed, rightly be extremely offended – if I
reduced his entire family life and marriage to sex with a vagina.

Bob Felton also chimed in to remind us of the depraved view of marriage held by the fundamentalist Christian crowd:

Sullivan is right about the cultural isolation and the reductionism,
but it shows that he hasn’t spent much time amongst southern
fundamentalists. If he had, he would know that they define marriage as sex — or, more precisely, as cosmic permission
for sex. The mutual loyalty and shared ambitions that actually make a
relationship a marriage are specifically and relentlessly condemned, for
those things are presumptions upon … Him, who is to have all your
loyalty and who will let you know what are your ambitions. It’s childish, and it’s odious, but Robertson’s exposition of southern fundamentalist ideals is definitely authentic.

These fundamentalists - and this includes Robertson - are not nice, decent or moral people. Hate and bigotry are the stock in trade. More Americans need to recognize this reality and treat these people like the pariahs they deserve to be.

A number of readers of this blog have followed it from the beginning and have followed me through the horrors of my divorce after coming out, my struggles to find full self-acceptance and freedom from internalized homophobia, moments of deep depression and other life time events and challenges. Now, after five and a half years together, the boyfriend and I have set a date and will be getting married in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, April 20, 2014. We will be using the same marriage commissioner that friends used and found to be wonderful.

As for the timing, we had thought of waiting until marriage became legal in Virginia, but in the wake of the DOMA ruling and with the boyfriend's dad growing older - we want him to co-officiate since he is a retired pastor - we decided that waiting would be a mistake. The ceremony in Washington, D.C. will be small. We will have a larger reception back in Hampton at a later date which has not yet been finalized. So far the support from friends and family, including all three of my children, has been amazing.

More details will follow as the plans become finalized. My life has come a long way since the dark days of the past.

While most political junkies believe that she has already made her decision to seek the presidency in 2016, Hillary Clinton told Barbara Walters that she will make her decision during the coming year. Clinton may be playing coy, but time will tell for certain. Politco has some highlights from the Walters interview:

Hillary Clinton says she’ll make the decision next year on whether she’ll run for president in 2016. “I
will look carefully at what I think I can do and make that decision
sometime next year,” Clinton told ABC’s Barbara Walters in an interview
that aired Wednesday night.

Clinton, named Walters’s “Most Fascinating Person of 2013,” said insisted she is still hasn’t made up her mind.

“It’s such a difficult decision, and it’s one that I’m not going to
rush into and I don’t think we should be looking at the next election,”
the former secretary of state said. “I think we should be looking at the work that we have today,”
Clinton said, noting issues such as unemployment, food stamps and the
economy.

She said that for the first time in decades neither her nor her husband were in public office, and called it a relief.

When asked if Bill Clinton wants her to run, Clinton said her husband
has been “very respectful” and that he wants her to “do what I think is
right.”

Clinton said it is important that the country has a female president
but said, “I don’t know the exact timing of it or who that might be.” ”Of course I want to see a woman in the White House,” she added.

I never cease to be amazed at how the Neanderthals of the far right feel that they have a license to say any kind of horrible and untrue thing they want about gays. No other minority in this country is such open game for overt hate and bigotry - even white supremacists have learned some level of decorum as to where they unleash their racists vitriol. But not so with the homophobes. A case in point is "Duck Dynasty" star (if star is the correct term) Phil Robertson who let loose with a rant in an interview in GQ Magazine. Thankfully, A&E was not amused and suspended Robertson's bigoted and prejudiced ass. Not surprisingly, the usual hate merchants are crying foul. What's truly foul is the hate and bigotry that comes from the "godly folk." It is little wonder that less than a third of the Milennials see clergy as honest and why a third of them no longer identify with institutional religion. The New Civil Rights Movement looks at the Robertson saga. Here are highlights:

A&E’s popular reality series “Duck Dynasty” has just entered the
culture wars. The father of the clan, Phil Robertson, told GQ Magazine
in an interview published today
that being gay is illogical. The 67-year old Louisiana patriarch also
compared homosexuality to bestiality, adultery, prostitution,
alcoholism, lying, stealing — and terrorism. He also, unsurprisingly,
says gay people are not going to heaven.

“It seems like, to me, a vagina—as a man—would be more desirable than a
man’s anus,” Robertson says. “That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s
more there! She’s got more to offer.

GLAAD is speaking out, calling the comments “littered with outdated stereotypes and blatant misinformation.” And they’re talking with A&E about it.

Robertson’s “statement is far outside of the mainstream understanding
of LGBT people,” GLAAD, in a press release notes. “In Louisiana, which
passed a constitutional amendment banning marriage equality, 56% of the population support some sort of legal recognition, marriage or civil unions, for gay and lesbian couples according to Public Policy Polling released in August 2013.”

“Phil and his family claim to be Christian, but Phil’s lies about an
entire community fly in the face of what true Christians believe,” GLAAD
spokesperson Wilson Cruz says. “He clearly knows nothing about gay
people or the majority of Louisianans – and Americans – who support legal recognition for loving and committed gay and lesbian couples.

Unfortunately, Robertson is becoming more and more representative of the types of individuals who make up the Republican Party base.

Numerous posts on this blog have looked at the unrestrained domestic spying that has gone on under the National Security Agency that has left no American's telephone or Internet usage free from scrutiny. Sadly, until Edward Snowden released massive amounts of information most citizens foolishly thought they enjoyed at least some small amount of privacy. A commission appointed by Barack Obama has released a report that calls for numerous reforms to reign in the lawless behavior of the NSA. It is also important to remember that this lawless behavior began under the Bush/Cheney regime, one of the most lawless in history. The New York Times endorses the commission findings and calls for action in a main page editorial Here are editorial excerpts:

In the days after one of the biggest national security leaks in United States history revealed the existence of vast, largely unchecked government surveillance programs, President Obama said he would “welcome”
a robust national debate over the appropriate balance between
protecting national security and respecting individual privacy and civil
liberties.

The recommendations demonstrate how far afield
the National Security Agency has wandered in its zeal to vacuum up the
phone and Internet data of virtually every American, not to mention
world leaders and other non-American citizens.

They also show the lack of regard for the Constitution that has led
those efforts, and the virtual absence of supervision and restraint by
Mr. Obama and his predecessor, President George W. Bush.

The most far-reaching recommendations are also the most common sense.
For example, the report calls for legislation requiring the government
to meet a higher standard before it can order a company to turn over
private customer records. It also calls for an end to the government’s mass storage of those
records, recommending that they be kept by the companies themselves or a
private third party in order to prevent government abuse. Otherwise,
the report warns, “high-level government officials will decide that this
massive database of extraordinarily sensitive private information is
there for the plucking.”

Among its many other important recommendations, the report singles out
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, whose judges hear arguments
in secret from the government alone, with no opposition, and issue
classified rulings on significant constitutional issues. The panel said
Congress should establish an advocate to argue in those hearings for the
privacy and civil liberties interests of the public. And the selection
of the court’s judges, which now resides solely in the hands of the
chief justice of the United States, John Roberts Jr., should be divided
among all the justices of the Supreme Court.

Perhaps most damning of all, the report calls into doubt the central
justification for the surveillance dragnet: preventing terrorism.
Echoing the finding of a federal judge who ruled
on Monday that the phone-data collection program was probably
unconstitutional, the report said the data sweep “was not essential to
preventing attacks.”

Mr. Obama need not wait for Congress to act to implement the reforms he
said he wants. He can quickly adopt his panel’s recommendation and end
the ineffective and constitutionally dangerous dragnet surveillance.

With the Democrats now holding all statewide offices in Virginia for the first time since 1969, the Virginia GOP still has another shoe that may drop soon after the new year begins: a federal indictment of out going GOP governor Bob McDonnell and his greed mad wife, Maureen. Sources indict that the Justice Department was ready to indict the first couple but decided to delay based on appeals from the McDonnell's attorneys. While an indictment does not guarantee a conviction, it would still be another blow to the GOP brand in Virginia. The Virginian Pilot reports on the situation:

Federal prosecutors told Gov. Bob McDonnell last week that he and his
wife would be charged in connection with a gift scandal, but senior
Justice Department officials delayed the decision after the McDonnells'
attorneys made a face-to-face appeal in Washington, according to people
familiar with the case.

Dana Boente, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia,
told the McDonnells' legal teams that he planned to ask a grand jury to
return an indictment no later than this past Monday, people familiar
with the conversations said.

The governor and his wife, Maureen, would have been charged with
working together to illegally promote a struggling dietary supplement
company in exchange for gifts and loans from its chief executive, the
people said.

They also argued that if prosecutors proceeded with charges, they
should wait until after McDonnell left office Jan. 11 to allow a smooth
transition of power to Gov.-elect Terry McAuliffe.

Some element of the lawyers' arguments apparently persuaded the
Justice Department to delay, according to people with knowledge of the
case. They spoke on condition of anonymity because its sensitivity.

A final decision about whether to press charges is now not expected before Jan. 2 and could come as late as February, they said.

It is not unusual that a high-profile target, especially a sitting
governor, would be allowed a chance to appeal a U.S. attorney's charging
decision to top officials of the Justice Department. It would be very
rare, however, for the Justice Department to ultimately overturn a
decision made by a U.S. attorney.

McDonnell's attorneys have been pressing Justice Department officials to
reconsider or delay - at least long enough for McDonnell to complete
his four-year term and avoid becoming the first sitting governor in
state history to face criminal charges.

It will be interesting to see what happens. I still suspect that Maureen McDonnell is the one who began this saga.

Recently, the daughter of a Republican candidate contacted me in reaction to a post I wrote about her father. We ultimately spoke by telephone and surprisingly agreed on many issues, particularly the toxic problem of the GOP base's stranglehold on the nomination process which either (i) forces sane candidates to have to stake out insane positions to get nominated or (ii) allows true lunatics to beat sane and rational candidates. As noted in an earlier post today, Mark Obenshain's concession to Mark Herring has already reignited the war over whether or not the Virginia GOP will continue to use state conventions which lead to more extremist candidates or revert back to primaries. The same civil war is being waged all across the nation. A column in the Washington Post looks at the growing civil war. Here are excerpts:

The Republican civil war, like all civil wars, is even messier than
it looks. It’s a battle between two different conservative
establishments, complicated by philosophical struggles across many other
fronts. Its resolution will determine whether we are a governable
country.

The tea party certainly still wields power in GOP primaries, one reason why only one
of the seven Republican senators facing tea-party challengers, Lamar
Alexander of Tennessee, supported allowing a vote on the deal. But Ryan
and House Speaker John Boehner calculated, correctly, that the wreckage
from October’s shutdown strategy allowed them to breach the tea party’s barrier against deal-making.

Let’s be clear about what this GOP brawl is not. It is not a clash
between “conservatives” and “moderates.” Most genuine Republican
moderates either lost primaries or were defeated by Democrats. Liberal
Republicans, once a hearty breed, disappeared long ago. The Republican
Party is unequivocally in conservative hands.

Nor is this a fight in which “the Republican establishment” is being
challenged by its “grass-roots” enemies. Boehner denounced conservative
fundraising behemoths (they include FreedomWorks, Heritage Action and
Americans for Prosperity) because he understands that they now
constitute an alternative Republican establishment. Sen. Bob Corker
(R-Tenn.) was even more explicit, arguing that “many of the outside groups do what they do solely to raise money.”

The showdown involving the two conservative power centers is not the
only dispute that matters. There are crisscrossing divisions between
foreign policy hawks and non-interventionists; between those who care
passionately about social issues such as abortion and gay marriage and
those who would play them down; between purist libertarians and
pro-business pragmatists; and between supporters and opponents of a more
open policy on immigration.

If Boehner cedes that decision to the party’s
confrontational wing, the gains of this week will evaporate. And given
the hostility among conservatives to Obama, the habit of seeing
compromise as a form of capitulation could prove very hard to break.

The results of a new Gallup survey will warm the hearts of those who believe religion and clergy are afforded too much deference: Americans' rating of the honesty and ethics of the clergy has fallen to 47%. Perhaps more encouraging or discouraging depending upon one's prospective (I see it as encouraging), only 32 percent of Millennials (those age 18 to 34 years) view clergy as trustworthy. same. Given the sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church - and the fact that no one has been punished - combined with sleazy televangelists (why does Pat Robertson spring to mind?) and the overt racism of many self-styled Christian "family values" organizations, it is easy to understand the revulsion toward the clergy of Milennials. These finding on the declining view of clergy also further underscore the long term idiocy of the GOP in its quest to totally prostitute itself to Christofascists. Here is a summary of the survey findings:

Americans' rating of the honesty and ethics of the clergy has fallen to
47%, the first time this rating has dropped below 50% since Gallup
first asked about the clergy in 1977. Clergy have historically ranked
near the top among professions on this measure, hitting a high rating of
67% in 1985.

As Christianity Today noted, trust in the clergy varied significantly depending on one's political affiliation and age:

Americans are divided along party lines, as well as age. Gallup found more trust in clergy among Republicans
(63%) than Democrats (40%). Similarly, clergy members appear more
trustworthy to older Americans than millennials: half of Americans older
than age 55 trust clergy members, while only 32 percent of millennials
(18 to 34 years) report the same.

In an unrelated post, Bob Felton looks at another possible reason for the decline in trust in clery: the clergy are lying to the sheeple and they know that they are lying but they keep on lying. The following quote comes from a former seminarian:

Without devolving into extraneous details, I will say that it was my
seminary courses, the texts, coursework, lectures and research, which
cast into question Biblical authority and thereby theology. While I had
studied the Bible devotionally for years, it was only in the context of
seminary that I was expected to study it critically. In other words, is
the Bible the inerrant, infallible, unchanging word of God? Was it what
it purported to be? Learning that the bulk of the Hebrew scriptures were
altogether fictitious, plagiarized versions of other ancient mystery
religions with a desperate agenda to galvanize and perpetuate an ethnic
minority, and then to learn that the Gospels were not in fact the actual
words or deeds of Jesus, since they were authored in thousands of
variant forms generations after the death of Jesus, all produced an
intellectual and theological crisis for which I could no longer
authenticate myself as a minister of the gospel.

Curiously, my seminary professors cautioned us that the churches we
served, that the congregations we pastored, weren’t ready to understand
the Bible in these terms . . .

All things considered, I continue to view religion - especially fundamentalist denominations - as an overall negative force in the world. Hate, hypocrisy, violence towards others, and bigotry are religion's main fruits and outweigh any positive benefits that might flow from it. Hopefully, more and more Americans are figuring this out.

Thankfully GOP far right candidate Mark Obenshain conceded the Virginia Attorney General race to Democrat Mark Herring (pictured at right) this afternoon as the recount showed Herring's margin of victory increasing to over 810 votes per an earlier Washington Post story. By doing the right think Obenshain saved Virginia from what some had feared would be an attempt to steal the election by pushing the election results to the GOP dominated Virginia General Assembly. With the Democrats now having had a clean sweep in the off year election that for over 30 years has seen the party not occupying the White House prevail, the postmortems and back biting in the GOP will likely go over the top. Not that the Christofascist/Tea Party base of the Virginia GOP will be likely to admit that the majority of Virginians do not want the toxic policies and embrace of ignorance which are the hallmarks of today's GOP. A piece in the Washington Post looks at the growing Democrat advantage in statewide elections. Here are excerpts:

Democrat Mark Herring’s victory in the exceedingly close Virginia attorney general’s race, which Republican Mark Obenshain conceded Wednesday, ought to end any debate about two key questions regarding politics in the Old Dominion.

First, in statewide elections, it’s now beyond doubt that
Democrats start with a significant advantage. It turns out the 2009 GOP
landslide, led by Gov. Bob McDonnell, was an exception fueled by the
initial, tea party-led backlash against President Obama.

Since then, Democrats have won five straight statewide elections: for
president and U.S. Senate in 2012, and for governor, lieutenant
governor and now attorney general in November. Democrats hold every
statewide elective office for the first time since 1969.

“In a
statewide election, this is a state with a bluish tint. Republicans can
win, but they can’t win easily,” said Bob Holsworth, a veteran Richmond
political commentator.

Minority and immigrant voters, who tend to
support Democrats, are growing as a share of the electorate. Populous
suburbs such as Fairfax County, which used to be up for grabs, are now
reliably blue. Those that once leaned red, such as Prince William and
Loudoun, now lean the other way.

Second, to be competitive, the GOP needs to nominate candidates with
more moderate views, especially on social issues. Republican support for
low taxes and less government regulation is popular. But the GOP loses
many voters because of its positions on issues such as abortion and
immigration.

He [Obenshain] lost primarily because the Democrats were able to link his views to
those of Cuccinelli, especially on social issues. A Herring ad pictured
Obenshain riding in the same car as Cuccinelli. The Democrats called
attention to Obenshain’s sponsorship of a bill that would have required
women to report miscarriages to police within 24 hours.

Republican Tom Davis, a former U.S. congressman from Fairfax, said
the 2013 election “should be a wake-up call” for his party. He blamed
its right wing for insisting on a convention that nominated candidates
who couldn’t appeal to moderates. “It was a rebuke of the
Republicans,” Davis said. “They lost it because they have a very
exclusionary process for recruiting candidates. They do not understand
the changing demographics of the state, and they’re not talking about
issues that people care about.”

The GOP’s advantage in the House can restrain the Democrats’ agenda for
now. If the Republicans wish to advance their own, however, they’ll have
to win the top offices. On some issues, that will require a shift
toward the center.

The comments on a post at the conservative Bearing Drift blog illustrate what the Virginia GOP has in store for it as efforts are made to nominate candidates who are electable. One comment sums up the mindset of the Neanderthals who do not grasp that Virginia and the nation are changing and rejecting the Christofascist/Tea Party agenda:

This is just incredibly sad. Not just for Mark O. and the VA GOP, but
for Virginia. I am very much afraid that this beautiful state is going
to become perverted and leftist. There is a reason why I didn't move to
Maryland at one time in my life. I hope we don't lose our soul to
whatever kind of "marriage" Hollywood is promoting on network t.v. this
week, illegal immigrants calling the shots in the state legislature, and
Medicaid expansion at the cost of our long-term access to health care
providers, because it was dictated by the Federal administration.

Meanwhile, the boyfriend and I are extremely happy that Mark Herring will be our next Attorney General and that we had the honor of holding a fundraiser for him in our home.

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Out gay attorney in a committed relationship; formerly married and father of three wonderful children; sometime activist and political/news junkie; survived coming out in mid-life and hope to share my experiences and reflections with others.
In the career/professional realm, I am affiliated with Caplan & Associates PC where I practice in the areas of real estate, estate planning (Wills, Trusts, Advanced Medical Directives, Financial Powers of Attorney, Durable Medical Powers of Attorney); business law and commercial transactions; formation of corporations and limited liability companies and legal services to the gay, lesbian and transgender community, including birth certificate amendment.

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